MJ Out Of Pegs Panel

[D.T. Nethery]

My God! Shouldn't an animator have more drawing skills than what is shown here?! I couldn't decide if this is meant to be parody or a serious demo.

I understand what you mean, but I have "no comment" on the artwork shown in the video. I don't know that the video was intended to be an example of good drawing, but simply an example of the requested function of inbetweening "off-pegs" . Harada had posted that video in the Japanese forum, so I re-posted it here to give some context to my follow-up comment to Don Perro. The point being that it seems as though others are asking for a similar function to what he has suggested , to be able to manually flip back and forth between the drawings in off-pegs position .

[Paul Fierlinger]

Well, I was just appalled that anyone would have the need to inbetween such simple drawings off peg and spend almost 5 minutes on a single drawing of a character's head ... I think that would come to one second an hour, 8 seconds a day of inbetweens if the frame rate would be 12fps.

My sentiments expressed here are that I often see people asking for complicated features to be developed for what should come naturally with ease to just draw without crutches-- just draw the friggi'n thing and go on to the next one, I feel like screaming. And now imagine the time spent taking those drawings off the pegs and clamping them together, and then fitting them back where they came from, which this clip doesn't even cover.

This is why I couldn't grasp from the beginning what the point for this mechanism could be and now that I have seen it demonstrated, I understand the reasoning even less.

[Fabrice]

I guess David just wanted to show that the feature request is shared by many animators and many countries.

I knew it already, but it's important for us to remember it from time to time, since such situations push the option higher in the todo list.

[D.T. Nethery]

My sentiments expressed here are that I often see people asking for complicated features to be developed for what should come naturally with ease to just draw without crutches -- just draw the friggi'n thing and go on to the next one -- I feel like screaming.

I'm with you , Paul . I often have this issue with students. They will spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to avoid drawing , only to end up with lackluster results that clearly reveal their digital "cheats". Then they have to fix it or suffer a poor grade on the assignment. They don't realize it would be easier in the long run to do it the "hard way" by drawing. Sometimes I hesitate to even tell new students about the existence of tools like Transform and Warp because they misuse them. They will try to do their inbetweens by cutting and transforming pieces of an existing drawing (like an arm or a leg) , which always ends up making the action look flat and mechanical , like a hinged paper cut-out puppet , rather than draw it out properly . The Transform and Warp tools (and Out-of-Pegs) are great tools when used by someone who is knowledgeable enough about animation to know when and how to "cheat" a drawing , but unfortunately those same tools can encourage lazy habits in the untrained animator.

It's the same thing when using pencil & paper: it is always easy to tell when an inbetweener has relied too much on the "shift-and-trace off pegs" method because their inbetweens will be stiff and mechanical . Shift-and-trace off pegs must be used with discretion , lightly penciling-in the shapes using a blue pencil , then the drawings should be put back on the pegs and the accuracy checked by flipping . Any adjustments should be made while flipping and correcting as you go , when finishing the inbetween with black line on top of the rough blue line . The same approach should be taken when working in TVPaint .




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[Paul Fierlinger]

That really covers the subject, David. One day someone might be able to explain why people who don't like to draw want to become animators of drawn films.

[dperro]

By the way dperro Do you work/draw/erase on all three drawings when you have "Out of Pegs"?

No, just the middle drawing. The other two drawings should be finished, cleaned up drawings because you can't create an accurate "inbetween" from two "rough" keys. I will look for the videos I sent Fabrice last year.

The Japanese girl was giving an example of the "shift and trace" method of inbetweening, but it should really be called "shift and inbetween". Also, she was doing it mechanically and just looking at the whole image to get a middle line. For Disney feature quality, you have to use the shift and trace for specific parts. In her case, I would shift and flip, looking at just the eyes, then shift and flip looking at just the mouth. Also, you shouldn't have to clip the off pegs drawings together, you can press down with your hand to keep them from slipping around. And, although it may start a huge conversation, I can't believe that people still work on top pegs (although her "1-3-2" flip...with the inbetween on top was pretty impressive!).

Mads, you can call me Don. (And to Dave...will you be going to CTNx next month? I bought a sponsorship package and am bringing a bunch of students and alumni down to Burbank. Also, Nik is working in Vancouver and coming to talk to my students on Friday!)

[dperro]

Here is the video that explains why manual flipping, back and forth, is important when using "Off the Pegs" for shift and inbetweening.
http://www.vimeo.com/55219207" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Mads Juul]

Mads, you can call me Don.

I Will Don

[dperro]

My sentiments expressed here are that I often see people asking for complicated features to be developed for what should come naturally with ease to just draw without crutches -- just draw the friggi'n thing and go on to the next one -- I feel like screaming.

.

Sorry Paul. In my opinion, flipping out of pegs isn't a crutch. It's a tool for the highest level, classical (Bambi) feature style of animation. You can't get those precise inbetweens without it. I know because I was an inbetweener for two years and worked with and without shift and trace. My animation program is one of the last around here that still teaches only 2D, hand drawn, classical animation (no 3D). Each student has a 21" Cintiq but also an old fashioned animation desk. My students are currently working on a scene of dialogue with Alice (from Alice in Wonderland) and that is a tough assignment! Their instructor for this class (not me) is a former Disney animator and asked that this assignment be done on paper because TVP, as great as it is, doesn't provide the control that paper does. I think that the point is almost moot but I agree with him.

[Mads Juul]

flipping out of pegs isn't a crutch. It's a tool for the highest level, classical (Bambi) feature style of animation.

I Agree, and not even for the highest Animation. 4 years ago I was the Animation Director on a Danish Feature http://www.cinema-public-films.com/pages/torben/, And to reach the Footage goal of the film the Lead Clean Up Artist asked for a way to Unpeg Inbetweening. So I Scripted a tool to help Unpeg Inbetweeing . That I made available in this Custom panelhttp://forum.tvpaint.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3648
And it helped the Clean up Artists.

[Sewie]

Here is the video that explains why manual flipping, back and forth, is important when using "Off the Pegs" for shift and inbetweening.
https://vimeo.com/55219207

To be honest, I very often don't even follow what the fuss is all about with this out-of-pegs discussion but that is a very clarifying video, Don. Thanks for making and posting it.

[Fabrice]

flipping out of pegs isn't a crutch. It's a tool for the highest level, classical (Bambi) feature style of animation.

I Agree, and not even for the highest Animation. 4 years ago I was the Animation Director on a Danish Feature http://www.cinema-public-films.com/pages/torben/, And to reach the Footage goal of the film the Lead Clean Up Artist asked for a way to Unpeg Inbetweening. So I Scripted a tool to help Unpeg Inbetweeing . That I made available in this Custom panelhttp://forum.tvpaint.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3648
And it helped the Clean up Artists.

And we added the ""flip book + OOP"" shortcut since the 10.5. But ok you don't have (yet) the manual control over that specific flip option.

[D.T. Nethery]

(And to Dave...will you be going to CTNx next month? I bought a sponsorship package and am bringing a bunch of students and alumni down to Burbank. Also, Nik is working in Vancouver and coming to talk to my students on Friday!)

Don,

I wish I was coming to CTN , but my school has slashed all travel and conference budgets this year , so I can't afford the plane ticket/hotel/ and conference fee on my own because I've still got one kid in college (graduates in Spring 2014 ! Yay !) and just had to shell out money for some expensive automobile repairs , so the coffers are empty right now .

I was emailing with Nik recently and he told me that he is in Vancouver for 6 months working on a film . That's great that he's coming to Capilano to talk to your students. They'll love it. When he gave a lecture at Academy of Art in San Francisco a couple of years ago he talked for 2 and half hours (he was scheduled for half that time) and the students would gladly have had him go on for another 2 hours . They were still asking him stuff as he was trying to get out the door that night to fly back to L.A.


Hey, speaking of inbetweening off-pegs remember this from our days in Ottawa ? --

[dperro]

I'm sorry you won't be there this year. It was great to see you at the last one. Yeah, I haven't seen Nik since those Raccoon days though he met with a couple of my students who knocked on his door one year. He toured them through the studio and took them to lunch in the Disney cafeteria!

I don't think I saw those notes. With me, it was Chris and Schibs yelling at us repeatedly to "never shift and trace" and so I didn't. Until one day when they pulled all the inbetweeners to look at a Ralph's eyes popping due to an inbetweener shifting and tracing. I was shocked to see it was a scene I tweened for Hilary. I went to Chris and told him I NEVER shift...and apologized to Hilary. The problem was due to the keys being far apart and NOT shifting. After that I figured it out and at some point Nik secretly pulled all the inbetweeners together and gave us a class on how to do it properly. Made my life a lot easier!

I'm giving some TV Paint workshops to a team of animator at the studio he's at. It would be nice to see more 2D classical work coming out of Vancouver (or anywhere).

[Elodie]

I wish I was coming to CTN , but my school has slashed all travel and conference budgets this year , so I can't afford the plane ticket/hotel/ and conference fee on my own because I've still got one kid in college (graduates in Spring 2014 ! Yay !) and just had to shell out money for some expensive automobile repairs , so the coffers are empty right now .

Oh, too bad ! I wish I had the possibility to meet you IRL !